17 Comments

Fucking commie bastards clamoring for bigger guvmint! Burn them!

Expand full comment

That figure was for households containing a minimum-wage worker. So, slightly more that one such, on average.

Expand full comment

Fucking motherfucking motherfuckers.

Expand full comment

I was just wondering what had happened to you.

Expand full comment

That's close to what many <strike>WalMarts</strike> retailers do anyway - providing a store discount and then paying little enough that workers can't afford to pay full price at another store.

Expand full comment

Sorry libtards, but there's just no getting around the fact that it's harder to pay the CEO $23,000,000 if you start throwing more money at the lowly employees.

Expand full comment

Median rent is, of course, substantially closer to the minimum rent than the maximum, certainly in absolute dollars, and quite likely in ratio too. Aside from it being a semi-infinite axis, the income distribution of renters skews lower than that of buyers.

ETA: Consider the types of people who rent: young people who haven't bought yet; rich people vacationing; rich people relocating; rich people working short-to-mid-term too far from home to commute; people who can't afford to buy; and assorted others. Now consider how many people fit in each category, and also consider how long people in those categories will rent for. The "can't afford to buy" category is certainly going to account for the largest number of renters at any one time, and it's not that farfetched that it might constitute a majority of the rental market, in which case the median rent would be paid by someone in that category.

What I'm saying is, saying it's not Fux-level dishonest in the same way that <a href="http:\/\/www.rawstory.com\/rs\/2013\/02\/14\/scarborough-paul-krugman-is-as-extreme-as-nras-wayne-lapierre\/" target="_blank">Paul Krugman is not as extreme as Wayne LaPierre</a>.

Expand full comment

"Minimum wage employees tend to rent below the median."

And they'll stay there forever. I think the general idea is that this is not a good thing.

Expand full comment

So do food fetishists. One supposes.

Expand full comment

<blockquote>At the current California minimum wage of $8, you would just have to work for about 135 hours (or over three weeks of full time work) to pay rent.</blockquote>

Except that you will have FICA and Medicare taxes deducted from your paycheck. You'll maybe also have to pay FIT and state income tax. Once you account for all that, you discover that your takehome from a 40 hour week at minimum wage doesn't even cover the rent.

This is not unique to California. There isn't a city in the USA where you could pay the median rent on minimum wage without working more than 40 hours a week.

Expand full comment

As a reminder, Papa John with his cellulose/tomato paste base form of pizza threw a hissy fit because the supposed increase in employee health care costs was going to raise the price of what he calls pizza by a few cents.

You could hear people with carts hauling corpses yelling "bring out your dead" if Commander Hair Helmet and Egg were in charge.

Expand full comment

<blockquote> Also too, raising the minimum wage will not help the deficit, which is the most important challenge our country currently faces, really!</blockquote>

Even ignoring that the second part is total and utter horseshit, because Paul Krugman is right, the first part is <em>also</em> total and utter horseshit.

Since study after study after study has shown that raising the minimum wage does not reduce employment, it's abundantly clear that the effect it <em>would</em> have is to increase payroll tax revenue and decrease EITC, CTC, SNAP, WIC, TANF and Medicaid expenditures, and maybe some others that don't spring as immediately to mind. Also would increase state sales tax revenues, and while that wouldn't help the Federal deficit directly, it would probably allow a reduction in aid to states, which would.

Expand full comment

I'm thinking it would just be easier on you all if you and your commies just got <i>in</i> the bed.

Just sayin.</i>

Expand full comment

Trust me on this, it'd be nowhere near enough to get by in eastern Nassau county, either.

Expand full comment

I see the threshold for a response has been quadrupled. People power!

Expand full comment

This may be true of people who make stuff.

It's probably not true of people who import cheap shit from China and throw it in warehouses disguised as stores. Oh hai, Ghost Sam Walton.

Expand full comment